SMUGGLING PROBE
Ten suspects arrested
These are the masterminds who hid in the shadows.
A year-long cross-border probe has ended with the take down of an alleged network of competing Windsor gun smugglers who supplied firepower to street gangs across Ontario.
Officials said the undercover operation targeted top-tier gun dealers, the ones who let low-level mules take all the risk and smuggle firearms from Detroit to Windsor.
“How they’ve done their work in the past is they have other people do their dirty work,” said Det. Insp. James Smyth with the OPP Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau. “They have other people either knowingly or unknowingly bring the guns across the border. Our goal here was to draw those people out of the shadows.”
The investigation, dubbed Project Kirby, began in March 2015. The OPP, Windsor police, London police, Canada Border Services Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were all involved.
The operation came to a head in late February when police executed a raid in London, one in Lakeshore and six in Windsor. Officers arrested 10 people on 111 charges.
Investigators also seized eight illegal guns, two kilograms of cocaine, $67,000 Cnd, $10,500 US and three vehicles.
Among the seized weapons was a Tec-9 machine gun. Smyth noted one of the Columbine shooters used a Tec-9. Another seized weapon is a handgun known as “The Judge.” It fires shotgun shells.
Smyth acknowledged eight guns might not seem like a lot for a 12-month investigation. But he said the operation was less about collecting firearms and more about arresting the people who peddle them.
“We wanted to get to the point where we could show there is a repetition of behaviour here without going too far,” said Smyth. “As soon as we had the evidence we stopped it.
Two people — one in Canada and one in the U.S. — are still at large. The wanted Canadian is Philip Kwaku Nkrumah, 31. Police believe he’s in either Toronto or Windsor. The Detroit fugitive is Caron Williams, 23.
Those arrested include Curtis MarcellesKaylee Elaine Elliott, Coates,29, Roy 23, Hill, Donilo 27, Frank Marentette and Adonios Coutsogiannakis, 51, and Kevin Lewis, 28, all from Windsor. melo Police Marentette-Derose,also arrested Franco 27, Car-of Lakeshore, and Justin James, 35, from London. “If an organized crime group wants a gun, these are the people they are going to,” said Smyth. The aim for undercover officers was to infiltrate that network, gain their trust and make gun buys. But gaining the trust of gun smugglers, said Smyth, is no easy task. “These people change their minds every half an hour depending on what’s going on in their lives,” he said. “In my 24 years of service, I haven’t been involved in a higher risk project over the long term. Every time these officers were sent out they were in high-risk situations with people that were fairly unpredictable.” They don’t even trust each other, he said. “I would describe them all as more or less independent con- tractors,” said Smyth. “They knew each other but a lot of them actually didn’t even like each other. They considered themselves to be competition.”
The people buying guns were generally drug dealers from the GTA and other parts of Ontario. Many were members of organized crime groups making million-dollar narcotic shipments.
“A lot of these organizations will acquire firearms to either protect themselves or deal with their competition, so to speak,” said Smyth.
Supt. Ed Hickey with Windsor police said all the gun transactions happened in Windsor.
“It is a conduit for narcotics and guns to come through the border here and head up the highway,” he said. “I don’t know if it would be the main conduit. I don’t have that information.”
“We have the busiest border in North America, so the traffic and proliferation of things coming through the border, one could suspect, is higher here than in other places.”
But that doesn’t mean Windsorites should fear walking the streets, he said.
“I want to make it clear that we don’t have an abundance of guns in our neighbourhoods,” said Hickey. “Our neighbourhoods are safe.”